


snow faintly falling through the universe

by justbecauseyoubelievesomething



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Depression, Drunken Kissing, F/M, Found Family, Implied Sexual Content, Panic Attacks, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 16:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21057146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbecauseyoubelievesomething/pseuds/justbecauseyoubelievesomething
Summary: The floor under her bare toes suddenly feels too cold. Once, after her cover was blown, she was forced to run three miles in the utter blackness of a winter night, without the chance to grab her boots and cloak first. It took many hours for the feeling to come back to her iced over feet by the time she was able to find safe shelter. Now the cold seeps up through the soles of her feet in the same way, chill spreading through every bone in her body.“My king, forgive me…”“Echo kom Azgeda. Will you die for your king?”//Chopped 100 Fanfic Challenge Round 2 Awards:1st Place Overall, 1st Place Canon Speculation Theme, 1st Place Ghost Trope, 1st Place Joke Kiss Turns Real Trope, 2nd Place Eavesdropping And Revealed Trope, 1st Place Character Struggles To Speak Because Of Laughing/Crying Trope WinnerThank you so much to everyone who read and voted!





	snow faintly falling through the universe

“You were weak,” Roan accuses, tonelessly. His low voice sends a familiar rumble down her spine.

“I am so sorry, my king. Please…”

“Now you have the audacity to beg?” He grins with no emotion behind it. “Weak.”

Echo slowly swings her legs over the edge of her bed, bare feet meeting the cold metal flooring. The genius girl, Raven, doesn’t even stir in her own bed pushed against the far wall. She’d spent the day crawling through various shafts, following some sort of wiring. Echo still can’t grasp why or for what purpose, even after nearly a month living on the Go-Sci Ring.

Roan stands at the open door, beckoning her forward. She ignores the fact that her king is still dripping with water. It pools around his feet before snaking away into thin air. The lingering scars from radiation burns dotting her face is enough to make her flinch away in remembered pain.

He chuckles, a thick grunt low in his throat. “Scared?”

“Never.”

He laughs again and waves her forward, but she needs no direction. Her feet walk the now familiar path down the hall, away from the bedrooms. Past the junction that turns towards Monty’s algae farm, past the gaping doorway that leads to the rest of the abandoned space station, and finally across the main Go-Sci hub to the wide observation window. The curving edge of the earth spreads out beneath her feet, a mottled blanket of fire and water. Praimfaya burns on.

Echo presses her palms gently to the cool glass, leaning forward until her forehead and the tip of her nose rest against the clear barrier. There’s a fine line in her soul, a tightrope walk between deadly fear and exotic thrill, to be floating amongst the stars themselves, protected only by metal and glass.

Roan leans forward next to her, never quite touching the glass. “So you do still know how to face fear like a warrior.”

The contemptuous bite in his voice makes her want to shrivel into ash. She holds her back a little straighter. “You sound like your mother.”

He grimaces and she feels a slight edge of victory, until he responds, “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

She decides to let it go. Her breath fogs the glass just slightly as she lets out the smallest sigh. She imagines the window vanishing and the dark pull of empty space curling around her limbs. The memory of crushing airlessness, the mad scramble for the oxygen vents, is still vivid in her mind. The stark and sudden fear that she would die crawling mindless on the floor like a wounded animal.

“You still refuse the warrior’s death.” It isn’t a question.

“Give me an enemy to fight and I will die a thousand deaths for you, my king,” Echo pleads, the desperate whisper as familiar as her nightly walk.

“I gave you an honorable death and you ran. You bring shame and dishonor on your people with every breath you still draw.” His accusations weigh on her shoulders and her bent neck. Every limb feels numb and heavy with guilt. The first few nights she cried as she watched earth spin below her feet. Now she has no tears left. Not for earth, not for herself.

“Echo kom Azgeda. Will you die for your king?”

She screws her eyelids closed, never moving her forehead from the window. “I’m so sorry, Roan.”

She doesn’t have to look to know that Roan is already gone. She can feel his sudden absence in every fiber of her being, a missing piece in a broken puzzle. She felt it that long and terrible night of the final conclave and she knew, even before the Fleimkepa snuffed out his candle, that he was gone forever.

The Ring is silent as she slips back down the hall and into her shared bedroom. Back between the thin sheets that make her long for one of the furs from her own bed in Azgeda. Back into an uneasy sleep.

“Okay, now attach the orange wire to the white wire,” Raven calls down the shaft.

“Ummm…” Echo eyes the myriad snaking wires as if they were actual snakes. “Which orange wire?”

Raven’s impatient huff isn’t unkind, but it still raises Echo’s hackles. Another reminder that she’s not meant to be here.

“Let Emori take a look.”

The lithe girl nimbly twists into the small space next to Echo, flashlight gripped between her teeth.

“I tha wan ober dere…”

“What?”

Emori grimaces and grabs the flashlight clumsily in her wrapped hand. “It’s that one over there,” she gestures, nearly blinding Echo in the process.

“Okay, okay,” Echo says, trying to shuffle farther out of her way. “I’ll just let you grab it.”

Emori smiles, a spark in her eyes, as she leans across the other Grounder girl to grab the wire in question. A few deft movements and the complicated tangle seems to fall away before Echo’s eyes, leaving Emori with two perfectly connected wires in her lap.

Raven gives a little gasp of triumph from above. “Perfect! That did the trick!”

“Great!” Emori jumps up to slither back up the shaft. Echo climbs up a bit slower, biting back the boiling frustration inside. How many months had she been amongst the Skaikru now and she still couldn’t even understand the basics of their world? It was enough to make her want to bash her head against the nearest jutting beam until she couldn’t remember what made her so embarrassed in the first place.

It only worsens as she finally hoists herself back up onto the main floor to find that Raven’s little experiment attracted Bellamy of all people. He leans over the mechanic’s shoulder as she excitedly points at displays and lights on her console, explaining her latest idea at a mile a minute. It must be a promising one because his lips twitch for a brief second out of their perpetual frown. Then he looks up and makes eye contact with Echo.

Immediately, his gaze darkens. He straightens abruptly.

“I’ll be at the farm if you need anything,” he announces, too loudly. Raven barely has time to stutter out a surprised goodbye before he turns on his heel and leaves the room.

Echo twists her fingers together nervously as Raven and Emori both turn to look at her.

“He still hates you, huh?” Raven breaks the silence.

Echo blows out a steady breath, fighting to keep her voice even. “I guess so.”

Emori raises an eyebrow at her. “You did try to kill his sister.”

“Thanks, I completely forgot about that,” Echo bites out before she can stop herself.

Emori rolls her eyes as she backs away hands raised in surrender.

Raven shakes her head, ponytail swishing back and forth. “He’ll come around eventually. Realize that you’re not that person anymore.”

“Will he though?” Echo asks softly. Bellamy’s constant animosity has done nothing to encourage the rest of the survivors to treat her with anything more than tolerance over the past year and a half.

Now though, Raven obliges her with a half-smile that’s almost soft. “Just give him time.”

“Time,” Echo snorts. She waves her hand vaguely in the direction of Raven’s blinking console. “All I’ve had is time and still know nothing of your ways. I know Bellamy only brought me because I’m an extra pair of hands, but I’m nothing but dead weight up here.”

“That’s not…”

“Then find something else,” Raven cuts through Emori’s half-hearted reassurance.

“What?”

“Find something else,” she repeats. “Something that will make you more than dead weight.”

She says it so easily. So simply. Like Echo can actually just do that.

“Something else.”

The words roll off her tongue and she finds herself staring at the empty floor space thinking about what Roan would have had her do. Blood on her skin, a sword point to her chest.

Emori follows her gaze. “What?”

Echo blinks, startled from her memory. “I’m just thinking… There’s a lot of empty space in here.”

Something about Raven’s raised eyebrow goads her on, eager to prove herself. “And we could use it. For…”

Swords and arrows. Flashing metal. A spear tip turned away. A warrior’s death passing by her by a hair’s breadth.

“For training,” she finishes weakly.

Raven’s other eyebrow jumps up to match the first. “Training?”

“Combat training,” Echo elaborates, defensively. Her blood rises again a little, enough to make her take a confident step forward and spread her arms. “None of you know how to defend yourselves properly. Not like I do.”

Emori and Raven exchange glances and Echo coughs, hyper-aware of every goosebump crawling across her bare arms. “I could teach you.”

As she says it, it occurs to her that this really is the last remaining purpose for her. The one task she can still perform.

One final nail for an obsolete hammer to pound at.

It feels like an hour passes with the way the self-doubt eats at her mind, but she doubts it’s more than a few seconds before a smile creeps across Raven’s face.

“If you can teach me how to fight even with this,” she gestures to her braced leg, “then I’d say you’re way more than dead weight.”

Her words push the fog of doubt from Echo’s thoughts for the briefest moment and she finds herself automatically sizing Raven up in a way she hasn’t done since she was on the ground, looking at a new recruit or an enemy combatant. Analyzing her stance, her build, her weak points.

Raven’s gaze sharpens and she cross her arms, slightly defensive. “What? Like what you see?”

Echo feels a genuine smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “Yeah, I think I can work with that.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Roan doesn’t turn to meet her eyes, but Echo is used to that. His silence is as much permission as anything.

“Why did it have to be you? Every other clan chose a champion from their ranks. You know I would have fought for Azgeda. So why?”

Roan seems to waver slightly, but it could just be her bleary vision.

“Only a coward refuses to fight for his people.”

The answer is predictable, if not what she’s searching for. Echo sighs and traces the curve of the earth on the window in front of her. A little over two years after Praimfaya and the earth is mostly a picture of barren wasteland. The ashen grey and pale brown patchwork reminds her of home in a bittersweet way. The northern reaches of Azgeda never boasted much in the way of greenery or colorful wildlife and Echo spent most of her training years blending with snow and shadow. She wonders idly if the earth will feel more like home than it did before.

“You know that these Sky people you think you have befriended consider you an enemy still,” Roan speaks again. “These… exercises… you insist on performing are meaningless.”

Echo swallows thickly and tries to give a casual shrug.

“This is what I was designed for, is it not? No different than the training I helped you with.”

This time, Roan does turn to meet her gaze and she hastily adds, “My king.”

Roan blinks impassively. Eyes unreadable. Then turns back to the window so slowly she can hear the painful creaking of his armor.

“Lying to yourself was never your strength, Echo,” he says. His gravely voice sends another pang of guilt straight through her bones. “You have no more warrior’s calling than a child playing at being Heda. This… make believe…” He spits out the words with contempt. “This playing, can not bring you the honor you need.”

Echo shivers violently. The floor under her bare toes suddenly feels too cold. Once, after her cover was blown, she was forced to run three miles in the utter blackness of a winter night, without the chance to grab her boots and cloak first. It took many hours for the feeling to come back to her iced over feet by the time she was able to find safe shelter. Now the cold seeps up through the soles of her feet in the same way, chill spreading through every bone in her body.

“My king, forgive me…”

“Echo kom Azgeda. Will you die for your king?”

She trembles, swaying back and forth just enough so that her forehead bumps the window with each movement. “If you would give me more time… a chance to die fighting again…”

He is gone almost before the words have left her mouth. She wishes with all her heart that she could cry again, but the tears simply won’t fall. The pain merely coils into a knot low in her stomach and waits. She pushes herself away from the window with a deep breath of resignation and turns to leave.

She freezes.

Something is wrong. Different. Dangerous.

She slips into survival mode without making the decision. Every detail of the room committed to memory. Something out of place now and screaming danger at her.

She moves forward slowly, letting her subconscious mind direct her steps. The desk, Raven’s desk, is wrong. One of the blinking lights that sits out of her view on the tilted console was throwing a pattern of light against the wall when she first walked in. Now it’s not.

Echo’s breathing sounds loud inside her own head, but she measures it and her heartbeat is steady. She slips forward silently on the balls of her feet. One step, two steps, and the third step she uses to launch herself forward. A dive over the console that she gracefully lands with a roll and a half turn that puts her on top of the crouched figure of….

“Harper?”

“It’s just me! It’s just me!” Harper is whispering frantically, even as Echo’s arms automatically pin her to the floor.

“What are you…?” She can’t even finish the thought, because she’s suddenly very aware that she slammed Harper to the floor with quite a bit of force and she abruptly flings herself backward.

“Are you okay?”

Harper sits up slowly, rubbing the back of her head gingerly. She’s dressed in nothing but a long shirt and her hair is tangled in several knots. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

A wave of fear rushes through Echo. Looming rejection. Punishment. Pain.

“I’m so sorry,” she stutters. “I was just… I was… I was…”

“Hey, hey,” Harper soothes and suddenly she’s the one sitting over Echo. But she’s also under her and Echo realizes belatedly that Harper pulled her into her lap and is running her fingers gently over her hair. She’s confused, so very confused. But it feels so nice that she doesn’t move.

“It’s my fault for eavesdropping,” Harper says softly. “I just heard talking down here when I got up to go to the bathroom and I was worried something was wrong. I shouldn’t have spied on you.”

A laugh bubbles up Echo’s throat at the irony.

Harper isn’t perturbed. Her fingers work through Echo’s long hair. So gently.

“Are you okay?” she asks after a few minutes.

Echo blinks up at her. “Of course. I’m not the one who hit the floor.”

“No, I mean…” Harper bites her lip. “I heard some of what you were saying and it sounded like….” She trails off and seems unsure how to continue.

Echo waits, unwilling to let her secrets spill that easily.

Harper sighs. “It sounded like you were talking to someone else. About dying.”

Echo tries to read her face for some sort of ulterior motive, but all she can find is sleepy concern.

How does one explain nightly conversations with a ghost? Just the thought makes her cringe.

So instead she says, “I tried to kill myself before Praimfaya.”

She waits for Harper’s reaction, but the girl merely stares at her. Echo shifts nervously.

“A warrior’s death. I wanted a warrior’s death, you know? In that lab before we left I… I was prepared. My knife was out, the blood was spilled. All I needed to do was… push...”

She closes her eyes, remembering in perfect clarity how shaky her hands were. “Bellamy stopped me. He convinced me to come with the rest of you and live to fight again.”

She opens her eyes. Harper is still stroking her hair with sure movements. Grounding her to this moment, here on the Ring.

“Here it’s so different,” Echo whispers, so softly she’s not sure Harper can hear her. “I struggle everyday to find a purpose here. On the ground I never questioned what I was supposed to do. When Nia gave me orders, I carried them out. And then when Roan…”

She chokes a little on his name and she’s not even sure why.

“I carried those out too,” she manages. “And his last command was for me to leave Azgeda. To not disgrace my people. I could still find an honorable death in Praimfaya. As a warrior.”

As a good and obedient servant.

“I tried to kill myself before Praimfaya too.”

Harper says it so easily that Echo thinks she must have misunderstood her at first.

“You… did?”

Harper nods and bites at her bottom lip again. “You’ve heard us talk about our friend Jasper before?”

Echo knows the general story. One of the Skaikru’s closest friends stayed on the ground and used jobi nuts to send himself into the deepest sleep of all before the fire came. They don’t talk about it often, especially when Monty is within earshot.

Harper takes a deep breath and busily works her hands through a knot in Echo’s hair. “I was there too. I was going to join Jasper and the others.”

Echo blinks up at her, suddenly distracted from her own pain and confusion. “You?”

She can’t imagine sweet Harper, who sings in the showers and kisses Monty on the cheek every morning, ending her own life.

Harper nods, gaze faraway. “It was a tea. Just a mug of tea. It didn’t even taste bad. I had it in front of me, just like the others. I took it to my room to just sit for a minute and have some last thoughts.”

Her eyes fill with tears, but her voice remain steady. “I just stared at that mug. For maybe an hour. Trying to imagine how peaceful everything was going to be once I drank it. But I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine not fighting anymore. Not like that.”

“And then Monty found you,” Echo says, enthralled by the vision.

Harper smiles. “I found him, actually. I dumped the tea down the sink and got dressed because I knew we were going to make a run for it. And then I went and found him. It was like I couldn’t just leave him to keep fighting on his own.”

“It’s harder to fight alone,” Echo acknowledges.

Harper looks at her and Echo thinks that her sadness is a different kind now. “You’re right about that.”

Echo pushes herself up, muscles creaking from lying still for so long. “We should probably go to bed.”

“Yeah…” Harper is slower getting up and Echo winces at the thought of the soreness that she’ll probably have in the morning.

“If… if you want… you could join me and Raven and Emori for some training tomorrow,” she ventures. “It might help with the soreness from…”

Harper smirks and rolls her neck ruefully. “Yeah, I might need that.”

“Good.” Echo feels suddenly awkward. “Thank you for… talking.”

“Of course.” Harper licks her lips. “And if you ever want to talk about anything again… I’m here.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it.” Harper is suddenly intense. “Even if it’s just a question about some Skaikru thing you don’t understand. I’m happy to talk.”

“Oh… okay,” Echo stammers, taken aback. She’s surprised to realize she doesn’t feel cold anymore, despite lying on the floor for who knows how long. Instead, as the two girls make their way back to the bedrooms and then Harper takes her leave with a slight smile and a nod, Echo feels an unfamiliar warmth run through her blood. A warmth that lulls her to sleep with ease for the first time in a long time.

Something about having a friend makes the weeks pass a little quicker. Most nights Echo still talks with Roan alone, but sometimes Harper is already awake and waiting for them. She brings blankets and wraps one around Echo’s shoulders and sits by the window with her, keeping watch over the universe.

Monty smiles at her more too and is less reluctant to ask her questions about Azgeda, mostly about what sort of plants they grew. At first, Echo wonders if Harper told Monty everything, but there is no pity in his bright eyes, so she concludes he doesn’t know the details. She tentatively starts to spend more time in the farm, watching Monty and Harper tend the pools of algae. They teach her little ways to help, enough so that she doesn’t feel quite like a hammer without a nail anymore. Maybe a hammer with a few nails. And she really does enjoy the way that Monty’s eyes light up when he tests a new batch of algae, much the same way Raven’s eyes burn when she solves a complex problem. They are fire and water and Echo is somewhere in the middle. Or maybe something else entirely. Ice among the stars.

Months drone on and Raven and Emori run simulations endlessly, trying to prepare to go back to earth. Echo teaches Emori how to use her shorter height to topple a large opponent and teaches Raven how to minimize pain while she bounces on the balls of her feet. Harper and Monty join in every once in a while and Harper proves surprisingly fast and flexible. What Monty lacks in physical instinct he makes up for with quick thinking and Echo wishes she could have had him for spy training when he was young enough to start. She tells him so without thinking and at first bites her tongue in embarrassment, very much surprised when he doubles over, laughing at the idea.

The months also bring a tension that hangs heavy in the recycled air. Emori and Murphy argue endlessly, shouting matches that usually end with one of them yanking the other into an abandoned hallway to work at their feelings in a more physical manner. Harper and Monty’s tension is also palpable from time to time, but they make a habit of being more discreet about their methods of problem solving. One time Raven does catch them in a very compromising position in one of the airlocks with the gravity turned off. She laughs so hard that it brings most of the others running to witness Monty and Harper struggling to grab their floating articles of clothing, both red as the Praimfaya sunset.

So Echo’s not quite sure why she’s so surprised when she walks into her and Raven’s room one afternoon without announcing her presence and finds Bellamy sitting astride her roommate, bare backside completely on display.

Raven spots her first and immediately taps a pattern on Bellamy’s arm that has him immediately up and staring at Echo.

“Um…” Her brain is short circuiting. She’s trying so hard not to let her eyes wander below his waist that she finds herself staring pointedly at the light fixture behind his head.

“Is everything okay?”

He doesn’t sound embarrassed. He sounds commanding, with a hint of worry. It’s a tone she’s heard from him dozens of times when he’s strategizing with the others.

Echo swallows a lump in her throat. “Everything is fine. I was just looking for Raven.”

“Well, you found me.” Raven doesn’t sound upset. In fact, it sounds like she’s holding back laughter.

Echo is emboldened and takes the initiative to step around Bellamy to give Raven the datapad Emori asked her to pass on. As she slips past him, he turns slightly and for just a moment, she brushes his bare chest. He’s warm and slightly damp from exertion, breaths still coming at a faster than normal rate. The sweat only serves to amplify the slightly tangy odor of the dry shampoo they use most of the time and Echo finds herself momentarily off-kilter. She makes the mistake of glancing up into direct eye contact.

Echo sucks her breath in quickly. Bellamy’s dark brown eyes bore straight through her own. His freckles stand out starkly under the pale lights in the bedroom. The beard he’d only recently started wearing, does nothing to obscure the way he tightens his jaw. It suddenly makes her wonder what his face looked like a few moments prior and she wishes she could have seen the expressions he was making.

Where had that traitorous thought come from? Echo shakes herself quickly and slips past him to sit on the bed by Raven who has a strange glimmer in her eyes.

Bellamy coughs. “I’ll be going then.”

He swipes up a pair of pants from the floor and barely yanks them on before he’s hustling out the door. Raven purses her lips and waggles her fingers at the empty doorway.

“See you later, Blake,” she calls, sarcastically.

Echo eyes her, unsure, but Raven gives her a half-shove. “What? Like you didn’t know already.”

Echo decides not to say anything, but her face must have spoken volumes because Raven suddenly sits up straight, ignoring the way her sheets fall around her waist. “You didn’t know?”

Echo shrugs slowly. “Guess I wasn’t paying attention,” she says carefully. She’s not sure why a feeling of betrayal is rolling through her stomach and she doesn’t care to analyze it.

Raven barks a short laugh. “Yeah, for a couple years now.” She reclines again, arms comfortably behind her head. “Guess we were sneakier than I thought.”

Echo blows a brusque breath. “Anyways about this data from Emori…”

“Wait, are you okay with this?”

Echo rolls her eyes. “Raven, I’m serious. We need to talk about…”

“No, no, that can wait.” Raven grabs the datapad and tosses it haphazardly to the foot of her bed. “What’s up with you right now?”

Her eyes are sparkling with something that Echo can’t identify and it makes her feel like she’s missing a crucial piece of information.

“Nothing is ‘up’ with me, right now,” Echo says, bluntly. “I was just… caught off guard…”

By how good he smelled. By how nice he looked. The sound of his voice.

Raven presses her lips together in a look of disbelief. “You know, it’s nothing serious, right?” she says. “We’re just blowing off some steam.”

“Right,” Echo repeats. “Blowing off steam.”

“I’m not in love with him or anything.”

“Why is that important?”

Raven shrugs. “It seems relevant.”

“Why?” Echo pushes, sharper than she means to.

Raven narrows her eyes. “I guess it’s not. Forget about it.”

Before Echo figures out what to say to that, Raven pounces on the datapad and starts drilling her with questions that Echo only knows half answers to. It’s enough to put the whole uncomfortable encounter out of her mind at least for a little while.

“Okay, okay, I’ve got one,” Murphy slurs, sitting up so fast that Emori slides off his shoulder with a grunt. “I dare Monty to moon the entire earth!” He waves his hand wildly at the observation window.

There’s a chorus of drunken laughs around the little semi-circle and Monty hops up, face bright red.

“Think I’m chicken, Murphy?”

“Obviously. You’re stalling.”

Monty flips him a rude gesture and practically runs to the window where he yanks his pants down with no ceremony and shoves his rear against the window. Everyone cheers and Harper passes around another round of shots from the musty bottle labeled ‘The Baton’.

The truth or dare game had been going on for hours and Echo was feeling pleasantly warm and bubbly inside. She leaned back on her palms contentedly, letting the tiredness that only alcohol could bring start to spread through her muscles.

“I’ve got one,” Emori says, slightly more awake after Murphy’s abrupt movement. “Echo, truth or dare?”

“Mmm, truth,” Echo murmurs, still feeling the twinge of pain in her arms from her last completed dare.

Emori leans forward dramatically. “Have you ever been in love?”

Roan’s muscles straining as she knocks his feet from under him in the training ring. His voice low in her ear as he whispers a kill order to her. Water dripping from his beard and trailing down his dented armor as he stands with her at the window.

“I… yes…” she stammers before she can process. “A long time ago.”

“Who was it?”

“I already answered the question,” Echo retorts, curling her legs up to her chest.

Murphy smirks at her. “Ooh, sensitive?”

“No,” she shoots back. “There’s just nothing to tell. I… never had much time for romance.”

Raven cackles beside her. “Obviously! You should have seen her the time she walked in on…”

“Raven,” Echo hisses quickly.

“What? It’s just funny! I mean, you could not stop staring! Have you ever even physically been….”

“It was Roan!” she blurts.

All eyes stare at her unblinking. She curls tighter.

“It was King Roan,” she corrects herself in a small voice. “But that is… highly inappropriate so it… we never...”

“Oh, Echo,” Harper says softly and sadly and it looks like the others are feeling the same pity. Echo winces and steels herself, for what she doesn’t know.

The voice that comes next is not the sympathetic tone she was expecting.

“You guys are really eating this up, huh?” Bellamy’s tone could have melted stone. It makes Echo sit up straighter to meet his burning glare.

“Bellamy…” Raven tries, but he waves her aside.

“She’s got you all wrapped around her fingers now. With her sob stories and her little servant girl act. She’s a killer. A murderer. A spy.”

The words pound at her already dizzy brain, leaving her with a deep headache. She can only stare at him, tongue-tied.

“You need to let it go, man,” Murphy drawls from somewhere on the periphery of her vision. Everything is blurry except for Bellamy and his white-hot anger.

“Let it go?” Bellamy is indignant. “How many times did she make our lives a living hell? Her and Roan both!”

“He was looking out for his people,” Echo finally manages. The words feel thick falling off her throbbing tongue. The world is spinning around her.

“And look what good that did him in the end.” She has a feeling that Bellamy isn’t quite sure what he’s saying either.

“Seriously, Bellamy,” one of the girls pipes up. “Stop hating Echo. We’ve all moved on.”

“I don’t…” Echo isn’t sure if the alcohol is making it harder for him to talk or harder for her to hear.

“I don’t hate her,” he is saying, unsteadily. “I have a right to be angry.”

“You so hate her,” Murphy eggs him on. He’s laying on the floor now, not even looking at Bellamy. “You hate her so much you want to kill her.”

“Murphy, I do not,” Bellamy rages, voice continuing to pick up volume.

“Then prove it!” Monty cuts in. “Dare you to prove you don’t hate Echo.”

“What?” Bellamy’s voice takes on an odd pitch. “That’s not even… how do you prove something like that.”

“So you’re refusing the dare,” Murphy asks, popping his head back up.

“No, I’m just… this is ridiculous.”

“We dare you to prove it!” Murphy yells, much louder than necessary at the same time that Emori starts clapping her hands together in an annoying rhythm.

“Prove it, prove it, prove it.”

“Shut up,” Bellamy growls, but Emori only giggles and Murphy starts to chant with her.

Raven cackles again faintly. Echo thinks she might be half asleep. Maybe they’re all dreaming.

“Fine,” Bellamy grunts. “I’ll prove it.”

He surges forward, across the little circle and presses his lips to Echo’s firmly, hand cradling the back of her head to keep her from tipping backwards.

She’s not ready for it and for a second she’s all teeth and shocked breath and then muscle memory kicks in and she softly tilts her chin to return the kiss. It’s been years since she last kissed someone. Before she left Azgeda for good. And Bellamy is… very good at it. She finds herself unconsciously deepening the kiss, parting her lips just slightly to allow him more access. He responds hungrily, the hand at the back of her head tightening in the strands of her hair. Echo’s hands fly up automatically to grasp at his face, her fingernails raking across his stubbled cheeks in a way that has him growling deep in his chest. She’s dizzy and spiraling, but his hand in her hair and his lips glued to her own are twin anchors keeping her from flying away. His skin is fire and when he finally pulls back enough to take a breath, she feels the flames still smoldering between them.

Someone is whistling obnoxiously off to her right and there are a couple hollers of “Get a room.” Bellamy’s eyes are darker than she ever remembers seeing them as he hoists her to her feet.

“My room?” he asks roughly and she nods more out of surprise than anything else.

They nearly run back down the passageway and she barely has time to turn around at his doorway before he’s pushing her through and onto his bed, hands raking down her body and yanking her shirt up and away. Fire and ice pushing and pulling at each other in a fight that she’s not nearly practiced enough in. So she lets herself fall into his shadow and the flames cover her completely.

Roan is disapproving. She doesn’t have to ask, she just knows.

She sits this time, cross-legged, as they watch the world go by.

“Traitor,” he finally lets the word fall from his lips like poison.

She flinches. “No, my king. It means nothing.”

“It means everything.”

“No, it….” She remembers months ago stumbling across Raven and Bellamy. “It was just blowing off steam.”

“You can disguise it however you like, but your loyalties have shifted.” Roan turns and walks a few steps away, back to the window and to her. “I can no longer trust you.”

Her heart plummets into her toes. “Roan, please. Don’t leave me…”

“Echo kom Azgeda. Will you die for your king?”

She rises, facing him bravely, shaking so hard she feels drunk again. “Yes, of course. Let me prove myself, Roan. My king.”

He turns and watches her keenly. “Prove your worth. Now.”

She’s cold, shivering with the effort it takes to lift one leaden limb and move it forward. She vaguely wonders why Harper didn’t bring her any extra blankets tonight. It feels like a knife in her back and she knows that’s ridiculous, but the pain is rippling through her anyways.

She tiptoes back into her room. Raven moans a little and then tosses towards the wall, still dead to the world. Another twinge of pain. Why couldn’t she wake up? Tonight of all nights?

Echo pushes that away too and pulls out her sword from it’s spot under her bed. The worn handle feels good in her calloused palm. The blade is ice cold, even against her numb forearm as she steadies it in the dim light. A good weapon. A good way to die.

She passes back out into the hall and impulsively starts to head for the window before abruptly veering into the bathroom instead. She has a sudden thought that blood would be easier to mop up into the shower drains this way. Murphy wouldn’t grouse as much.

She feels like one with the white tiles as she kneels in the first shower stall. She sheds her shirt, leaving her with only her bra and thin sleeping pants. Her toes curl underneath her as she tries to steady her hands.

First the slice across her palm to begin the bleeding. The blood is so warm it burns into her skin. Like snow melting under her feet with each desperate running footstep. She leaves one bright handprint on her bare stomach. An expanse of skin where she can still feel the whispers of Bellamy’s kisses.

The thought almost makes her stop what she’s doing. She could go back to him right now. Wake him up and ask him to stop her again. Maybe this time he would stop her with kisses and that peculiar burning in his eyes that made her feel awake again.

She can feel Roan looming behind her, his shadow turning the white tiles grey.

“Echo kom Azgeda.”

“I will die for you, my king,” she answers lowly. Her hand comes to rest on the floor in front of her, steadying her just for a second. The tiles are too slick to leave a decent handprint. The blood trickles towards the drain sluggishly.

“Murphy’s on clean-up duty tomorrow,” she says to no one in particular. She doesn’t want to make Roan impatient, but it seems like something that should be said. “He’s going to be pissed about this.”

“Pissed?”

Roan’s confused break from his stern façade makes her smile. “A word I learned from Skaikru. Angry.”

“You were almost one of them,” Roan warns, making goosebumps crawl down her spine.

“No. I am one of them,” she whispers. Teaching them how to fight. Pretending to enjoy Monty’s algae. Getting drunk on the floor. Kissing Bellamy relentlessly.

“I am…” The sword wavers. It would be so easy to just lean forward. To rest.

She rested with Harper’s fingers in her hair. With Raven’s laugh in her ears.

Wasn’t that enough?

“I… am…” The sword falls and clatters loudly in the tiled room. It will wake people up. She’s not sure she cares anymore. She needs them. Needs to not be alone.

Raven stumbles into the room and flips on the light, blinking rapidly at the scene in front of her. “Echo?”

She can’t stand up. She can’t move. Her knees are frozen to the ground, her chest moving in heavy breaths.

Roan is gone. She can feel it. Gone for good this time. It’s an empty chasm in her belly. It’s a chain of fiery ice around her throat. She tries to push the panic down, but it’s clawing its way out.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Emori is there and Echo doesn’t remember her coming in. She doesn’t have her hand bound and Echo is caught off guard by the feel of her bare skin pressing against Echo’s bare shoulders. It feels real and she tethers herself to it.

“She’s freezing.” It’s Harper’s voice and then Raven is muttering something and suddenly there’s a spray of warm water spilling down on her from the showerhead. She blinks her eyes open in confusion and the warmth spills down her cheeks while three pairs of arms surround her. Through the water she can barely make out the narrow outline of Raven’s worried face.

“I’m sorry,” she tries to say, but the dam is already broken and she can’t, she can’t, she can’t. The sobs come from deep in her chest and tear roughly at her throat. She feels like a wounded animal again, howling over a pain that can’t be fixed.

Emori’s arm starts to shake and Echo leans back enough to look at her and realize that she’s crying too. She sees the guys crowding the stall behind them and then Monty is kneeling and wrapping his arms around her too, right next to Harper. Murphy plops down next and weaves his arm through the crook of her own, ignoring the water soaking through his clothes. They surround her, arms tightening around her and she cries and she thinks most of them cry too.

She cries for Roan and her people and a hammer with no more nails and a snowfall that she’ll never see again. She cries for a family that she lost years ago, realizing now that she never really cried for them. And she cries for this family that has as many broken pieces as she does, but tries so hard to fit them together.

It feels like a very long time that she sits and cries. Slowly, as if from a great distance, she becomes aware that the sobs have died down. Her chest still aches from the force of them, but she can take deep breaths again. She is tired.

She stirs and a pair of arms tighten around her protectively. “Whoa, hold on a minute.” Bellamy’s voice makes her pause.

He reaches up and turns the water off before slowly leaning away from her. She misses his arms instantly, but she turns so she can look him in the eye.

“Where?” she starts to ask, but her voice is scratchy and weak so she clears her throat and tries again. “Where are the others?”

Bellamy licks his lips and if she didn’t know better she would think he was nervous.

“I finally convinced them to go back to bed. You were calming down so I said I would wait it out with you.”

Echo wanted to ask how long he waited, but she was bone weary so she merely nodded in thank you.

Bellamy toyed with the hem of his wet shirt. “Echo… I’m sorry. I never wanted this for you. I was… wrong, to push you away for so many years.”

Echo slowly shakes her head. “You have no reason to forgive me, Bellamy. You were right. You were always right about what I was. It’s why I almost…” She looks at her sword, pushed off to the side of the stall. “I’m not even supposed to be here.”

“You’re wrong,” he says vehemently. “We need you. Here. You are supposed to be here. With all of us.”

She blinks at him, droplets of warm water still standing in her eyelashes and she feels something light deep inside her again.

“I’m not saying this is going to be easy,” Bellamy continues. “But I want this to be different. You with all of us. We’re a family and we want you to be here… I want you to be here.”

He glances at her, suddenly unsure. It almost makes her laugh.

“I think I want to be here too,” she says.

When he smiles, it feels like the sun.

She doesn’t see Roan again. But sometimes she goes to keep watch at the window, with a blanket around her shoulders, Bellamy’s hip pressed against one side and Harper’s bedhead resting on the other, and she feels warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The 100 Chopped Challenge Round 2. The challenge was to include the tropes:  
\- one character as a ghost  
\- a joke kiss turns into a real kiss  
\- someone is eavesdropping and is revealed  
\- someone can't talk due to laughing or crying
> 
> Title is a reference to a quote from James Joyce's short story "The Dead".


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